Tag: power

Start off easy for the first five minutes, they said. Then build up over the next five minutes to see how you feel. And then for the final ten minutes, empty the tank, full gas, don’t hold anything back.

This was my first Functional Threshold Power (FTP) test, a form of cycling baseline fitness testing. 11 of us from Yale-NUS were doing our tests simultaneously, and each of us were coming to the test with varying levels of experience with cycling.

Those who were completely new to cycling had not properly suffered on a bike before. Not knowing what this feels like, and not knowing when the limits are reached, they tried to follow the advice but could not tell what easy felt like. True suffering on a bike creeps up on you, and then hits all of a sudden. They didn’t know when to expect this, and when it hit it hit hard, and they slowed down again to avoid the sensations. They listened to the advice of those with more experience, tried to implement it, but did not know what use to make of it.

Those with some cycling experience thought the advice to go easy was for absolute beginners; having some knowledge of cycling, but not years of experience, they thought they could maintain the same power for the entire twenty minutes. They went out too hard right from the start and at fourteen minutes in realised they’d made a mistake, trying to drop their effort slowly to avoid others seeing their overconfidence. They listened to the advice of those with more experience, thought they knew better, and realised too late the value of experience.

And those with years of cycling experience—those who gave us all this advice—know that the same mistakes are made by everyone almost every time. They put themselves into the position of a beginner, going out slow to begin, because they’ve seen over years that human nature falls into the same traps. The mind, especially when in moments of extreme suffering, will misjudge the body’s capacities. They humble themselves in advance, having seen how they and others were humbled after overconfidence.

If life is a well and we are swimming to the bottom, the reality is we do not know how deep the well is until we are three-quarters of the way to the bottom. But before we reach that point, we cannot stop moving, but must push onwards. How does one push onwards when one does not yet know everything? Either through a form of overconfidence or underconfidence; through arrogance or a form of schlep blindness.

Development of experience in all fields follows what is probably a similar process. The paradox is that advice given is useless until one has more experience; but when one has more experience, one is inclined to think the advice doesn’t apply. Wisdom in this sense is seeing the follies one has made in other fields and areas of life and then escaping those two traps by humbling oneself in advance.

About

Welcome. This is the personal website of Michael Moore-Jones. I'm a New Zealander and a Philosophy, Politics and Economics student at Yale-NUS College. I've previously studied at Yale University and ten other academic institutions in six countries.